The Miracle of Consciousness
SCIENTISTS LIKE TO TELL US that life sprang up spontaneously on this planet. If so, why then did this particular phenomenon only occur in one species in 4 billion years?
And did it really only occur on one planet in the entire cosmos?
Within the human body, there is an organ known as the brain, which scientific materialists have concluded (without proof to date) that this is the organ that generates “consciousness” and “thought.” They say that consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of brain function.
The brain, of course, is a pulpy cellular structure engineered by nature to indulge in electrochemical activity in conjunction with the autonomic nervous system. It does undoubtedly impel the body to take action for one very simple reason: so that the body can keep itself alive.
This does seem to imply that electrochemical and neuronal activity is primary and consciousness a secondary phenomenon.
Yogis, meditators, psychics, sages and those who practice what is called “shamanism” disagree with that conclusion, however. These practitioners of higher levels of perception believe that consciousness is primary and brain function secondary. They believe that consciousness sends signals to the cells within the brain and those signals are what activates the brain and causes it to utilize its electrochemical and neuronal networks.
Epigeneticists are cell biologists who have come to the conclusion — based on experimentation with cells — that the surface membrane of the cell is the cell’s brain. Why? Because it reacts to the environment when signals from it are received on its surface membrane. This is true even if the cell is denuded of its core machinery, DNA. That signal (or vibratory signature), epigeneticists say, originates in the planetary biosphere. When a cell reacts to such a signal, it sends a message to its interior instructing it to act in a certain survival-conducive manner.
If a cell’s surface membrane is its brain, then the DNA within the cell is its fingers, arms and legs. DNA doesn’t think. It instructs RNA to build protein structures. The cell membrane is what does the thinking and what makes the big decisions. Among those decisions are ones like “What shall we make at this particular moment? A human being, a lion, a rodent, a raven, a worm, a bacterium?” Quite intriguingly, all of these things are made of the same “stuff”: atoms, molecules and cells. The “things” created are just differently configured “constructs.”
One can only wonder, therefore, what is being created on other planets in the so-called “Goldilocks zones” that exist around other suns!
At root, our whole world is made of stardust and powered by sunlight.
So where does consciousness come from if not from the brain?
One can only speculate about that. People say that it comes from a “Supreme Being” we call “God” (by whatever cultural name one wishes to give that Being), from the “Akasha”, the “Tao”, the “Matrix”, the “Zero Point Field” and so on.
Whatever it is and however it originated, it just may be what triggered the whole process that formed the universe in the first place.
The argument in my mind goes like this: Something cannot come from nothing. This is impossible. What, however, is more “nothing” than consciousness itself? One cannot see it, touch it, smell it, taste it or hear it. Yet, it irrefutably exists.
Without consciousness, we humans could exist and perceive things, but we could “make” nothing of what we perceive. We would be just another animal wandering about with but enough awareness to fight for our survival, but not to reflect on the reality of our existence.
Yogis, meditators, psychics, shamans and near-death returnees, tell us that consciousness can indeed exist without a body, which may sound miraculous, but it is quite possibly our most totally natural multidimensional state.
The way to frame this is perhaps to say that if being alive and aware of our own “aliveness” is not miracle enough for us — if we need our miracles to defy the known laws of physics — then maybe we are far less grateful for, and impressed with, the life we experience than we think! And how, we must ask, are we even able to “think” such a thought?
To many of us, fear of “God” isn’t the beginning of wisdom, for to fear the Source of All That Exists is to fear life itself. How can one do that when we see all about us an infinite array of cosmic and planetary amazements, when we see the fecundity of life in our world and the staggering beauty and complexity of all that exists?
No, indeed, the beginning of wisdom, one might well conclude, is coming to the realization that conscious awareness is the one miracle that brings virtually every level of reality to fruition.
